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Kant: On willing maxims to become laws of nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Leslie Mulholland
Leslie Mulholland
Affiliation:
Memorial University of Newfoundland
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Extract

An Old and continuing tendency amongst critics of Kant's thought on ethics has been to maintain that since the categorical imperative merely provides a formal condition for the rightness of actions – that the principle of the action be universalizable without contradiction – it is inadequate as a test for the rightness of actions. Such critics as Hegel, Mill, and recently, R.P. Wolff, have suggested the same fundamental objection to Kant's doctrine: the requirement that a maxim be universalizable is formally compatible with any action whatsoever being right.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 92 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1978

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References

Notes

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4 Kant, Foundations, p. 13.

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15 Kant, Foundations, p. 40.

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